


Identity

by sonshineandshowers



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Emotional Hurt, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22838815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonshineandshowers/pseuds/sonshineandshowers
Summary: What's the meaning of data to Malcolm Bright?aka how to whump Malcolm with a database
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	Identity

Data. Relegated to a row in a decade’s old database slated for eventual replatform by the city. Lined up with technical assets spanning until 2025. Nothing leaving, only growing, filled to the brim with facts of life.

Columns holding everything from date of birth to place of residence, only social security number obscured from prying eyes. Copied to a test instance, nothing scrubbed, fresh blood seeping behind a firewall’s guise.

Present name: Malcolm Whitly. Proposed name: Malcolm Bright.

* * *

Letters piled in the bin, the last few put in cresting the top. _Why_ did companies send paper mail these days? It only led to starting the shredder every few months, divesting each envelope’s contents, and dicing them away into the recycling. What a waste.

Unfolding letter after letter, giving the header a second of cursory scan to decide its fate. Nothing to save.

Reaching the last third of the stack, slicing the top and cracking the crease: NOTICE OF DATA BREACH. Subtle. Designed specifically to catch the eye and spare it from the blades.

A nondescript line of what happened, legalese for data may or may not be gone and no indication to whom. Information involved: potentially a list of personally identifiable information from birth certificates, FOIA requests, and court records.

Civil Court of the City of New York records. Which could only mean hard-won, sealed name change records for his _safety_.

Gone.

 _Maybe_.

Sweat crept into his crinkled brow, dampened his shirt at his sides. Short breaths pushed away logical deductions of how many people had been affected - how unlikely it was that his data had been taken or the person would even care - and hoarded emotion’s pressure on every rise. Three months on the death row pile: what could someone have done with all that time?

Offer: two years of credit monitoring and identity repair.

For his fucking _life_.

Maybe.

* * *

The nightmare always starts with the records hanging over his head. It’s his father’s hands - of course it is - waving them in the breeze for some passerby to glimpse as an aside. _The Surgeon’s Son Revealed: NYPD Consultant Malcolm Bright_ \- another moment in a day of their typical life. Yet when they continue down the walk, he’s split from navel to chin, flowing out into the street.

Countless people with a vendetta against his father. Understandably riled loved ones with no closure to seek. Fans, and copycats, and aristocrats twined in the clusterfuck of his family. They couldn’t slice Martin’s vines, but another Whitly could bleed.

Awareness returns on the conference room floor, Gil’s shoulder catching his horrific scream. “They’re after me.”

* * *

Negligence: the word unsaid when they revealed the incident. Whether taken from outside or within, the data never should have been unscrubbed in a place designed to break and fix. John Smith, Jane Doe, and 123 Easy Street belonged in test instances, not Malcolm Whitly come Bright in 214D.

Statistically more likely for a crime to be committed by someone close, there was a higher probability his data had been stolen by an employee.

Maybe.

Malicious?

Maybe.

Analyzing the data didn’t help him sleep.

* * *

He steps in it. Makes it up a few stairs before the swish of paper on tread pauses him to swipe it from his heel. Textured card weighing heavy in his fingers: _Hello, Malcolm Whitly_.

The sentiment lights his fingertips, burns vicissitudes up his arm, scorches his chest with unwieldy flames, and he flashes into the blaze.

His father helps him cut his dinner, too old to warrant the service, yet it’s a way to encourage him to eat. Bartering with candy, hot cocoa, and a book before sleep. Twisting fatherly comforts to serve his murderous needs.

The knife in his flesh only hurts a little. Being cast in the light is a fire he can’t endure.

His hands pat at threats unseen, and he drops the few feet to the floor.

* * *

Then there’s nothing. Months of checking the entranceway, the stairs for any evidence of tampering with his home. Locking and confirming locked until his digits memorize the angle of every thumb turn. Shuttering the windows, blocking eyelines, hermetically boxed into his loft.

Silence rages every scenario of how someone could invade his space. In the dryer vent, through the range hood, from the rooftop. Desk drawer’s slamming crash: via the camera on his laptop. There aren’t enough locks, enough blinds, any ways to drop the Whitly from his blood.

It pours.

Over the windowsill, streaking whitewash down the building, running pain into the street. A viscous pennant screaming _let me be_.

The rain falls, and he grieves.

For a name. For safety. For what he’s lost. It’s not data - it’s his _life_.

In a century’s old townhome, boarded for destruction, by the city.

* * *

Maybe.

They can’t trace the card. In a flail, he pursues suit, but it doesn’t change may have beens to yeses or nos, doesn’t produce any evidence of what data or who. Doesn’t help remove his haggard past life from under his eyes. He’s pushed into Gil’s office: “It could be a coincidence.”

Perhaps it was wronged of the month, the crude descriptor Gil flings for perspective: he needs his fingers and toes to tally the year’s incidents surrounding the kid's father. Perhaps he ticked off someone buzzing on a case, a frequent enough occurrence for the acquired taste. Or perhaps the breach lobbed something new.

The gutting truth is no matter how many darts Gil throws, they don’t know.

Nothing happens.

Will it, though?

* * *

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> for alex's database class, jameena's wonderment of how to whump malcolm with a database, and linc, mac, and others on the ps whump server embracing my stray comment of someone uses the data to emotionally manipulate malcolm and encouraging me to write it. bouncing ideas is a powerful thing, folks - 8 hrs later came this. come join the fun on the ps whump server. <3 community


End file.
